June 29, 2017

Delaware News

Department of Education
Forwood garden promotes real-world science instruction
On a Saturday morning in late April, Forwood Elementary School staff, students and their families gathered to plant Brandywine School District’s first sensory garden. The garden, part of Forwood’s Green Ribbon Schools project, was designed to stimulate its visitors’ senses, and includes flowering plants with smells and colors to attract bees, beetles and other pollinators.

Middletown program gives students college experience
When aQuena Williams, career counselor for Middletown High School in the Appoquinimink School District, helped to create the school’s Delaware State University Early Bird program to increase early college access for male students of color, she did so with the understanding that the work would have to center on more than just the importance of academic achievement. “The program was purposely designed to go beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic,” Williams said.

Newsworks
Committee approves Delaware budget bill with big cuts for schools, nonprofits
Just two days before the deadline to set a budget, the state of Delaware has released a budget bill that makes millions of dollars in cuts in areas including education and grants to nonprofits. On Wednesday, the Joint Finance Committee balanced the budget by making $88 million in cuts. “None of these decisions were made lightly,” said JFC chair state Rep. Melanie George Smith, D-Bear.

The News Journal
First lady Carney spreads word about summer food programs
First lady Tracey Quillen Carney and the Delaware Department of Education are asking for the public’s help letting Delaware residents know there are free meals available throughout the state this summer for children in need. “We’re asking all Delawareans to join in the fight against childhood hunger by spreading the word about the Summer Food Service Program,” Carney said in a statement.

Delaware is obligated to invest in its children
Opinion by Caroline Harrison-De Jose, communications co-coordinator for Network Delaware.
The current legislative session is hurtling towards a close on Friday, sealing negotiations for the final 2018FY budget. As it stands, that proposed budget will cut $22 million dollars from education sustainment, and $15 million from charter and district operations. There are just days left in this fight, but it is not too late to contact your representative.

Delaware SkillsUSA students honored at national conference
Several Delaware students brought home national awards from a SkillsUSA conference this month. About 120 students and advisors representing six schools across Delaware attended the 53rd annual National SkillsUSA Leadership Conference in Louisville, Kentucky.

Howard HS principal honored
Stanley Spoor, principal of Howard High School of Technology in Wilmington, has been named the 2017 Delaware Secondary Principal of the Year by the Delaware Association of School Principals. He will represent Delaware along with all other state winners at the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ annual institute held in September in Washington, D.C.

National News

Education Next
School voucher programs in Indiana and Louisiana
June is shaping to be a busy month for private school choice advocates, critics, and opponents. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the Trinity Lutheran case, CREDO recently released a nationwide evaluation of charter schools, and two separate teams of researchers just released updates to their evaluations of voucher programs in Indiana and Louisiana. A vigorous debate has surrounded the voucher programs in Indiana, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, and Ohio.

Real Clear Education
Simulated classrooms have real potential to change teacher licensure assessment
We know that to be ready to support student learning on day one, a teacher needs to be able to carry out a set of key teaching practices. Among these critical and frequently used practices— identified as “high-leverage”—some are central to teaching content: practices carried out in the classroom working directly with students, modeling and explaining, leading student discussion and eliciting students’ thinking about the content.

The Atlantic
How black girls aren’t presumed to be innocent
A growing body of evidence has shown that the American education and criminal-justice systems dole out harsher and more frequent discipline to black youth compared with their non-black peers. But while most of that research has focused on black boys, a new study from the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality specifically turned its attention to society’s perception of black girls.

The Baltimore Sun
Maryland board approves new rating system for schools
Every public school in Maryland will be judged on a five-star rating system beginning next school year, under a plan the state school board approved Tuesday. The rating system, which will award one star to the lowest performing schools and five stars to the highest performing, is designed to give parents and others a simple guide to the quality of a school.

The Huffington Post
Inside the NAACP’s fight to stop Betsy DeVos from expanding charter schools
President Donald Trump may call education the “civil rights issue of our time,” but just weeks before he was elected, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization strongly rejected the very type of schools he loves to champion. In October, the NAACP voted on a controversial resolution calling for a moratorium on the growth of charter schools, which exist in 43 states. Over six decades after the organization fought to eliminate school segregation through the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, leaders said charter schools were perpetuating the very same segregation they fought so hard to stop.